Messages - brontodocus

Once again a figure I (think I) haven't seen before! Interesting fact about the flawed anterior margin of the pronotum. I can understand that small details like serrations on the mandibles may sometinmes be omitted in a figure but the pronotum is strange. Maybe they had two specimens belonging to two different species as a template?

Oh, I was depating on whether or not to get the tarantula but I might have to get an A. dichotoma! And I see you changed your avatar?

Yes I did The A. Dichotama is nice, but again not as detailed. There is a D. hercules as well. I think Andre has it.

I thought Andre had reviewed one but I couldn't find it. I'm sure once he sees this thread he'll elaborate:)

I had posted a few photos of it in the Coleoptera thread (they're not yet hosted on postimage so the links will not work anymore) but there wasn't a full walk-around. I think the photos I have left would probably not justify making a walk-around from them and the model itself has several repairs now... Quality wise I have to say that the Brachypelma smithi and the scorpion are more detailed than the (older) D. hercules. Sometimes I still regret not having bought the Helix pomatia, yet, that one seems to be an excellent model (and teaching resource), too!

Ah, excellent choices! Well, now it seems I still have zero figures which are in our current banner (well, sort of, I have the older version of the IC Flying Frog). That has to be remedied... Thanks for doing this again, Blaine!

Ah, the CapsuleQ Microcosmos set! You know, the zoea larva is so good that I use it as a three-dimensional reference every year in our invertebrate morphology courses. One of the slides the students have to examine and draw is the zoea of Carcinus maenas (which is quite similar) but most of the students are not accustomed to seeing a three dimensional object on a microscopic slide mostly they would not focus through the object and would not find the lateral spines which are present in the model, too.

So great to see that he is still making new figures under a new brand now! I was a bit worried he might have stopped this business entirely but great to see they are back. I hope he has success with this line and it's amazing how many new boxes are planned for future release.

A strange set with many interesting representatives! At first I thought those were magnets (there are quite a lot of these insect or arthropod magnets around which seem to be made in the same way with legs and antennae made out of wire). Although I'm not a big fan of those wire-legged fridge magnet style figures I must admit that some are quite unique choices species wide. I also have a handful of similarly made figures (with magnets) hanging on our fridge. Some of mine were given to me by a friend who bought them in India and said they were very cheap and widely available. It's nice to see that your set includes two heteropterans and I'm quite surprised they chose a member of Miridae. I have a magnet of another shield bug somewhere but I can't find it right at the moment. Sometimes even amphibians are made in a similar style, I have two generic treefrogs, one frog that looks like a Pelophylax sp., and the weirdest of them all, a Crested Newt which is uniformly purple. But I must admit, usually the legs and antennae are so generic that I'm really not very fond of them. However, there are exceptions, e.g. the legs on your Allomyrina dichotoma look a lot better than those on most of the others.

Wonderful! Wow, I can imagine when one buys these and waits for shipping... I'd be really worried they might break during shipping! Hmm, is this the first representation of Bhutanitis lidderdalii in figure form we see here?

This is the first of 10 of the species here ;-)

Yes when I buy them I always write to the seller to ship properly, even offering to pay extra sometimes to ensure their safety. Luckily, this set (and the solo at the end) were well-packed.

Hehe, of course I was wondering if this was the first (or only ever made) Bhutanitis lidderdalii figure/model since I can't recall having seen any other before.

Wonderful! Wow, I can imagine when one buys these and waits for shipping... I'd be really worried they might break during shipping! Hmm, is this the first representation of Bhutanitis lidderdalii in figure form we see here?

A few weeks ago I was finally able to get one of those big K&M salamanders at a shop in the Zoo in Dortmund, they had two versions, Tiger and Red Salamander, both with the annoying forked tongue. I bought the Tiger Salamander. Wait, it's not shown in this thread? I'll need a photo of mine, soon...

I know I have seen all 3 of the large and the medium; I have put up photos of the two former and three latter that I have. Don't recall the third one--if it is a tiger, that would be kind of neat, since they don't actually show up much as figures!

Well, so I'll just show how mine looks like... not the best representation, obviously, but still:

Don't remember exactly, but some 20 years ago I had to identify Scarabaeus specimens from the Etosha Pan in Namibia and was using a key by Zur Strassen from (I think) 1963, I'm not sure anymore but I think some Scarabaeus species mentioned in the key were indeed flightless. Considering the species id in this series, I think Fabre mentions Scarabaeus from Egypt (which would indicate S. sacer) but he made his observations in Southern France (where S. typhon occurs).

Ah, wonderful figure! While not among the least known species among Dynastinae, it's still a rare sight as a figure. If I recall correctly, D. satanas is also the only beetle species that falls under CITES regulations, this one and a handful of butterflies are the only insects listed.